UFO Info Week-End

But if contracts are too long they can become a noose round our neck

“But if contracts are too long, they can become a noose round our neck. It’s a difficult balancing act.”With no players on “release clauses”, if Wednesday are relegated at the end of the season, they will drop down to the First Division with a pounds 16m wage bill around their necks to the altogether more straitened circumstances of the Nationwide League. Wednesday’s latest accounts, to May this year, show an income of pounds 19m, on which a small operating profit was blown by an pounds 8.8m loss on transfers. Four summer signings took the wage bill from pounds 13m to pounds 16m, which now, according to Richards, accounts for 80 per cent of the club’s income.

The club has to wrestle, as all do, with the Bosman ruling; as clubs cannot demand a fee for players leaving at the end of their contracts, the tendency in football is towards ever-longer contracts.”We need players on contracts long enough to protect us,” says Alan Sykes, the club secretary. Coming from the club chairman, though, it seems an abject statement, particularly given that as recently as April 1997, Charterhouse, the City-based venture capitalists, paid Wednesday pounds 15.6m for a 36 per-cent stake in the club, in a deal hailed then as an “innovative” means of securing the club’s future.However, that money has gone, drained away mostly on expensive signings and rising wages. I’ve been searching for him for the last two or three years.”
This call might be understandable coming from a jaded supporter – although the model of a single, deep-pocketed benefactor is thought to be flawed by most financial analysts, a view supported by Blackburn’s current misfortunes. “If there is a Jack Walker out there,” he said, “please come and look at Sheffield Wednesday. In an interview published last week, Richards effectively offered to quit if someone turned up to rescue the club. STILL WITH only six points, five adrift of second-from-bottom Watford, Sheffield Wednesday, are embedded so far into the Premiership subsoil that their roots are almost visible in the Nationwide League. Off the field, recent comments from Dave Richards, the club’s chairman, suggest that the crisis is even worse, with Wednesday in serious trouble, running up debts of nearly pounds 18m, paying annual wages of pounds 16m to Wednesday’s collection of domestic journeymen and second-rank foreign players.

The Liverpool striker had a precautionary scan on Tuesday after complaining of soreness on his ankle.Watford have announced they hope to raise pounds 5m with a private placement share issue that will bring five new directors on to the board at Vicarage Road.. Lund, 24, is training with Spurs during his club Molde’s winter break.Robbie Fowler is unlikely to need further ankle surgery and could be back in action in a fortnight. McDonald resigned on Tuesday following protests from fans over the sale of players, while the manager Adrian Heath also quit after the 3-1 defeat by Port Vale.The Arsenal midfielder Fredrik Ljungberg will have to serve his three- match ban after all following the dismissal of his appeal to the FA over his sending-off at Tottenham.The White Hart Lane club are taking a sneak preview at the Norwegian striker Andreas Lund before making a pounds 3m move. Southgate will attend a personal hearing in London to answer another misconduct charge following the Filbert Street incident.Sheffield United have confirmed Bernard Procter will succeed Mike McDonald as chairman of the club’s plc in a temporary capacity until a permanent successor is found.